Just back in September a man rang the doorbell, and when I answered told me that he was from a logging company and was offering to cut down and remove trees in the yard at no cost.
We have lived in Fayette County since I was transferred here in 1995. On this property there are well over 100 Georgia pine trees several of which have been hit by lightning in the past few years. Most of the trees were over 100 feet tall and many of them could easily reach the house if they were to fall in a storm. Just last year one of the trees fell and destroyed the tool shed in the back yard, and so the man’s proposal fell upon open ears.
He said that he would not leave a mess and only leave the uppermost branches for us to easily burn after he left. He also told me that if I wanted him to cut trees in the back yard that he would have to remove a small section of wooden fence to the yard but would replace that section when he finished removing trees there.
I know that over 76 percent of all telephone poles in America are Georgia pine and I also know that there’s a demand for those trees and that this man’s company, McGruder Logging, would be able to sell the trees, so I agreed to his proposal.
McGruder did not just leave the upper section of the tree and did not replace the missing fence. Five sections of cyclone fence in the back yard had trees lying over it and destroyed. There was even one tree lying in the swimming pool in the back yard that my grandson pulled out.
Cut-down trees were dragged by tractor across the yard to a place close to the driveway where their center section was cut off and loaded onto a truck’s trailer and hauled away. The weight of those trucks and trailers broke the driveway cement in many places. Trees were cut from the house next door and they were dragged across the lawn too. I watched once when the pulling tractor went across the driveway with its plow down slamming into the cement where 5-foot of cement was broken out.
We would awake to the sound of chain saws and tractors for over a week, but one day there was silence. When I looked all, but one of the trailers was gone. No cars, no trucks, no chain saws and no tractors. All there was was a huge stack of wood and a tractor-trailer’s flat bed in the front yard. The trailer had no licence plate or wheels on one side of it. McGruder had disappeared.
McGruder, whose name was never mentioned on television, has done the same on Gingercake or the streets nearby on at least 10 homes, and it turns out that he’s using borrowed equipment to do the job, but he has left a mess wherever he has gone and Fayette County has informed me that we are in violation of county ordinances because of that mess.
Oh, and P.S.: It’s going to cost us at least $6,800 to repair fence and yard and clean up the stack of wood that came from both this yard and the yard next door.
Television didn’t mention it by name, but beware if McGruder Logging comes knocking on your door.
John M. Romph
Gingercake Road
Fayetteville, Ga.
